Messages - RoseRed

Just volunteer for something that you would want to be doing anyway. Like at the community legal-aid clinic. Or volunteer for something that does not involved a lot of work. Like being on the executive of a school club that sounds good but doesn't in fact do much.

Case and point: A few science students at my university created the BioEthics Debating Society. They meet twice a year for a "tournament" amongst themselves. I think may have also started hosting 1 or 2 showdebates. Now one of these students when applying for Med School got to write "President of the BioEthics Debating Society" on his Resume.

So to sum it all up, we have some guy who is concerned about whether the university he is doing his undergraduate at will effect his law school admissions likelihood and some one who has already graduated from law school trying to force Cheeks into arguing with them on published grounds over whether or not Queen and Western are top Canadian universities.

Cheeks provided excellent argumentation as to why the overall quality of a university can be based on things other than entering averages. While maybe this does not disprove that Queens and Western are at the top it certainly shows that simply citing those stats is not grounds for sufficient evidence.

In addition, these so called authorities on the ranking of Canadian universities are not as grand as you make them out to be. Quest, you quote the Globe and Mail for having ranked Queens number one in providing "Quality Education". In a past issue of The Globe's University Report Card it listed medical schools at York University and the University of Waterloo among Canada's Top 10, though neither has a faculty of medicine. Further, The University of Waterloo's law school placed ninth, yet they do not offer a law degree. Quoting these rankings is not the same as quoting fact. There is no definitive means of ranking universities. So at the end of the day we are left with what Cheeks said, to each his own.

Finally, what are you, Quest, doing on a pre-law forum? The only excuse you could have is that you are here to help those with questions, which you are clearly not. I find it amusing that you actually thought that responding to Cheeks with the fact that you have graduated from law school would 'one-up' him. Through your posts you have managed to call your intelligence, your law school, and the potential future of your dry cleaning being picked up by a U of T or Columbia Law graduate into serious question.

Perhaps this will be redundant, but I thought I would give my two-cents.

In the majority of cases laws schools only look at your GPA and your LSAT. So choose an undergraduate that you would enjoy and succeed in. I personally found after first year I did very well in philosophy. And as a bonus I learned philosophy students on average score the highest on the LSAT.

In concern to the LSAT, I would suggest you wait until the year before you are applying and write it in June. Why June? Well you have time off from school to study for it. As well, it is the only LSAT that is written in the afternoon instead of the morning. Perhaps you are a morning person, but I certainly am not. Even if you do poorly on it you can also then rewrite it in October or December.

Try to pick out approxiametly 3-4 professors that you could ask for a reference. I know you generally only need two reference letters, but in my final year I discovered that my two favourite professors where moving. I still used one, but the other moved to Texas which was too far for mailing back and forth information. Of your 3-4 professors try to ensure you have at least two classes with them during your undergraduate. Perferably one of which is in the year before you apply. As well, try to save great essays from the class to include in your reference request package. Of course, it is uncertain if the law schools will ever read their reference letter, but it is good to have outstanding ones.

At the end of day, law schools may not look at anything beyond numbers. But if you get put into a "maybe pile" at a holistic school it can be very helpful to have something that makes you distinct as a candidate. For instance, a friend of mine was a McGill Poli-Sci student who had a 75% average and a 80th percentile on the LSAT. By June he was rejected from every school he had applied to except Queens. U of O informed him that their reason for rejecting him was that his reference letters were not outstanding. Nevertheless, in late July Queens called him and told him that they would take him if he decided right away. When he asked them why he had gotten in, they said it was because he was on the McGill student council for a year.

It is hard to say if you will ever need anything beyond good numbers. It is hard to say what law school you will end up wanting to go to. Or what kind of law you will want to practice. So the best advice I can give you, is take a shot-gun approach. Make sure all your bases are covered. Do well in school, on your LSAT, become involved, know your professors and have fun doing it.